Climate

In 2019, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been reacting to the public catching on to its blatant partisanship and prioritization of corporations and ultrawealthy donors by undergoing some image rehab. Unfortunately, the Chamber’s substantive policy agenda remains as regressive as ever—anti-family, anti-worker, anti-consumer and anti-climate.

For an example of the Chamber putting lipstick on a pig, look no further than its recently-unveiled “American Energy: Cleaner, Stronger” agenda released through its Global Energy Institute (GEI). The agenda uses lots of buzzwords like “clean,” “renewable,” and “sustainable,” and its acknowledgement that climate change is a clear and present danger demanding action could easily trick you into thinking that the Chamber has softened its historical opposition to meaningful climate action. But this is merely PR-driven smoke and mirrors.

A closer look at what the agenda proposes reveals that it’s actually a continuation of that opposition, proposing that climate change be “resolved” through the private sector rather than through legislation and regulation, and advocating America’s continued reliance on fossil fuels. By the Chamber’s own admission, the purpose of the agenda is to obstruct public action on climate: it warns of “state and national leaders go[ing] too far with policy recommendations” and proposes that instead the private sector should lead the way through “innovation and technology.” This is a tactic Frank Luntz promoted all the way back in 2002: use language that makes you sound knowledgeable and reasonable to get away with maintaining inaction on climate change.

This plan is not remotely sufficient to meet the enormous challenge of addressing our climate needs. The international consensus on climate change estimates that we have only 12 years to cut global greenhouse gas pollution in half in order to avoid potentially catastrophic amounts of global warming. No one who has studied the issue could say with a straight face that we can reach that target through “innovation and technology” alone drastic government policy change is needed to zero out U.S. pollution on the timetable we need. In fact, the Chamber even posits that climate action should not be time constrained (with targets like 10 or 12 years in mind), even though the nature of the climate change problem requires that we solve it quickly.

The Chamber does not intend to actually meet the task of preventing unacceptable levels of climate change; it just wants plausible deniability against accusations of being a bad actor on climate. The Chamber knows it needs to adjust to the reality that voters are increasingly concerned about climate change, but has chosen to do so in a way that opposes real solutions. The reality is that deregulation and continued reliance on fossil fuels will make things worse, not better.

Goosing Up the Numbers

The Chamber justifies taking this inadequate approach by using some very suspect public opinion polling, commissioned by the Chamber/GEI and conducted by FTI Consulting. As argued by clean energy policy analyst Joel Stronberg, the survey’s questions are designed in a loaded way aimed toward achieving the kinds of results the Chamber wants. For instance, the Chamber’s results show respondent sentiment is only weakly in favor of “[r]equiring all aspects of the U.S. economy to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution in 10 years, including in all electricity generation, vehicles, agriculture, homes, commercial buildings, and manufacturing, regardless of cost.”

This question is clearly designed to invoke various connotations. For one, the “10 year” time-frame primes respondents to be thinking about the proposed solution as a stand-in for the Green New Deal (GND), which has been widely vilified through right wing media’s disinformation about its actual contents. Furthermore, the long list of types of institutions that would require elimination of greenhouse gas pollution is meant to feel exhaustive to the respondent, thereby priming them to think what is being suggested is excessive or an “overreach.” Finally, the phrase “regardless of cost” is suggestive of criticisms that taxpayers as a whole will shoulder an unreasonable financial burden in order to pay for large-scale government action on climate.

It’s worth noting that, even despite the many ways this question was loaded, it still received 55% total support, meaning a majority of respondents still approved of the policy.

Another of the Chamber’s findings from its survey is even more dubious. It pits the “Cleaner, Stronger” agenda against the GND, and asks respondents which approach they prefer, and finds that across the political spectrum, the majority of respondents preferred “Cleaner, Stronger.”

Specifically, respondents were asked “Which option would you prefer as a focus of our national and state elected leaders?” and given to options to choose between:

‘Cleaner, Stronger’: America focusing on using its resources responsibly and safely by implementing a ‘cleaner, stronger’ energy agenda that prioritizes investments in innovation and advanced technology to reduce emissions.

Eliminating Greenhouse Gas Emissions: America focusing on requiring a transition to the Green New Deal’s proposal to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. economy in 10 years, regardless of cost.

As Stronberg argues, “The comparison of its announced Cleaner, Stronger America Agenda with the GND alone is deceitful. Only in a two-way comparison of the GND and the Chamber’s American Energy: Cleaner, Stronger campaign can rejection of the one be considered support for the other—even then such a conclusion would be suspect.”

The question falsely implies that pursuing a GND-style approach will not involve any investment in innovation and technology. It also uses the same misleading language to stand in for the GND as it did earlier, portraying the GND as a radical policy and “Cleaner, Stronger” as more measured and therefore reasonable. A GEI press release calls “Cleaner, Stronger” a “realistic alternative to addressing energy and environmental issues.”

What this framing leaves out is that a reliance on the private sector could itself be easily portrayed as the more radical policy. Taking strong legislative action against climate change is a commonsense way of ensuring that the United States meets its global climate action responsibility; pursuing a deregulatory agenda is a recipe for making climate change worse rather than better. But the Chamber wants us thinking about only about the political ease of each approach, rather than what is actually needed to properly address climate change.

The Cleaner, Stronger agenda’s use of PR-friendly buzzwords and highly questionable survey methods is all aimed at a singular goal: deregulating the energy industry, allowing fossil fuel industries to continue to profit off the emission of greenhouse gases that will have a devastating effect on the climate. We should not fall for this deception. The Chamber may pretend its plan is a sufficient response to climate change, but we must be honest that avoiding catastrophic levels of global warming requires significant legislative and regulatory action.

As the country anxiously watches the Senate Judiciary Committee conduct hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice, the nation’s political dialogue has been ablaze. Not to be left out, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined the fray recently with a blog post titled “The Right Judge for the Job.” The post, by Chamber president Tom Donohue, is exactly what it sounds like: a full-throated endorsement of Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Public Citizen’s U.S. Chamber Watch project has frequently exposed the Chamber’s long-established right-wing leanings, from its campaign donations to the revolving door of staffers between the Chamber and various conservative institutions. But even by the Chamber’s standards, this endorsement is jaw-dropping. As the Chamber claims to be a politically unbiased institution only looking out for business interests, you would be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the Chamber endorsing President Trump’s recent Supreme Court nominee. When you begin to dig into Judge Kavanaugh’s history of rulings, though, the Chamber’s support for his confirmation starts to make a whole lot of sense.

In a recent report, Chamber Watch found that in 25 of the 33 cases (76%) in which the Chamber, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), or the American Petroleum Institute (API) participated as party or amicus curiae, Kavanaugh sided with the position advanced by the business groups.

This investigation serves to underscore the extent to which the Chamber’s legal activity now intersects with federal policy. As Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, put it, “Over the past several decades, big business associations, led by the Chamber, have become far more active in federal litigation. The involvement of these associations signals to judges what the Chamber and other trade associations believe to be important.”

It is also consistent with another recent Public Citizen report that found that in 87% of cases, Judge Kavanaugh’s opinion in split-decision on issues like regulatory issues, environmental protection, and worker rights sided with Big Business and against the public interest. These issues are some of the Chamber’s top priorities; the Chamber wants fewer consumer safeguards, fewer environmental standards, and fewer labor protections, because those policies let it pursue higher profits no matter the human cost.

With all of this in mind, the Chamber’s fulsome endorsement of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation begins to look brazenly self-interested. It wants an ally on the Court who will rule with its arguments in litigation and with its policy agenda. Based on Kavanaugh’s history of rulings, it may have made a safe bet.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know full well that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s hostility to environmental solutions is nothing new. To give just a couple of examples, the Chamber litigated against the Clean Air Act; it co-sponsored a sham study that President Trump later cited to justify withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord; it has sued the EPA at least 15 times; and it once even infamously called for a “Scopes Monkey Trial of the 21st century” to put climate science on trial. Public Citizen even debated the U.S. Chamber on NBC’s Meet the Press over Obama’s EPA plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Others have taken notice of the Chamber throwing its weight around in the energy arena, including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). In a recent letter to Pope Francis, Sen. Whitehouse highlighted how the Pope’s global goal of climate action and emissions reductions is being undercut in the United States by the massive lobbying power of Big Oil. Sen. Whitehouse even explicitly called out the Chamber’s role in Big Oil’s sabotage of efforts at climate solutions, noting that “[g]roups like the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and others have been employed as adversaries of meaningful climate legislation, in some cases with little apparent support for their opposition from the majority of the companies that make up their membership.”

The senator hit the nail on the head when it comes to the role the U.S. Chamber plays in propping up Big Oil’s lobbying efforts. The Chamber is collectively receiving millions of dollars from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco Philips, Occidental Petroleum, Philips 66, Hess, Apache, Tesoro Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Marathon Petroleum, and Noble Energy—and those are just the companies we know about because of their own spending disclosures, given that the Chamber does not disclose its donors. All of this adds up to massive lobbying power in the legislative sphere directed toward Big Oil’s interests, as the Chamber was, in 2017, the largest lobbying organization by spending in the country.

For its part, the Chamber is not at all ashamed of its role in propping up polluting energy sources to the exclusion of clean energy solutions that could ameliorate the effects of climate change or slow it down. Earlier this month, Chamber president Thomas J. Donohue published a blog post entitled “America Seizes Control of Its Energy Destiny,” celebrating the U.S.’s massively renewed focus on fossil fuel extraction and supply “bolstered by the Trump administration’s emphasis on pro-growth energy policies.” In other words, the Big Oil companies that make up the Chamber’s members and donors stand to profit hugely off of a shameless return to promoting fossil fuels to the detriment of green, renewable energy sources—and our environment.

Donohue’s post also promotes the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute, which works to “unify policymakers, regulators, business leaders and the American public” behind a Big Oil-friendly energy agenda. The Institute proudly touts buzzwords like “innovation,” “clean energy,” and “efficiency,” but the actual policies it advocates for are just the opposite. For example, it calls for offshore drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) that represent the same things Big Oil has always wanted: domination of the U.S. energy market to maximize profit, with no regard for the environmental destruction caused along the way.

True to form, the Chamber has also been painting the fossil fuel industry as the put-upon victim of vicious attacks by some massive opposition out to get them. In a recent post called “The Climate Change Tort Racket,” the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform wrote that “[p]laintiffs’ attorneys and left-leaning politicians are ganging up to shake down big oil.” The post asserts that these big bad plaintiffs are seeking to rob the poor oil industry of its resources, “looking for quick cash.” This, of course, ignores the plainly observable reality that Big Oil is a lobbying behemoth, armed with all of the legal power that the money of corporate mammoths can buy. Big Oil is Goliath, not David. Not to mention that Big Oil’s business is threatening all of human civilization with runaway global warming, and Big Oil has known about the threat longer than just about anyone and has been actively lying about it.

As Sen. Whitehouse’s letter to Pope Francis makes clear, the Big Oil lobby in the U.S., as propped up by the likes of the U.S. Chamber, has been an immovable obstacle in the way of the United States meeting its global obligations to reduce carbon emissions and promote climate solutions. Through blocking meaningful climate legislation, and through lobbying an extremely corporate-friendly Republican-controlled White House and Congress to remove barriers on the fossil fuel industry and deter them from alternative energy sources, the hope for the U.S. to be a global leader on climate issues seems grim.

Still, all hope is not lost. Nearly half of the Chamber’s board members have taken pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and a number of companies have already left the Chamber over its environmental policies. Customers who buy products from otherwise forward-thinking companies speaking out is one of the best ways to create enough momentum to get our nation’s leaders to finally stand up to Big Oil, fully embrace clean, renewable energy and become a force for positive global impact on mitigating climate change. By pressuring the Chamber’s members to #DropTheChamber and signing the petition to urge Pepsi, Disney, and Gap to stop funding the Chamber, the public can play a major role in moving the 800 pound gorilla that is the Chamber away from its current status quo of squashing climate solutions.

This Earth Day, we hope you will take some time to join with us in reflecting on the effect our lifestyles have on the planet and to make positive changes. We would also like for corporations that claim to be environmentally responsible to have that same introspection and take forward-thinking action.

Earlier this month, Australian miner BHP Billiton finalized its decision that it would be withdrawing from the World Coal Association over differences on climate change. Notably, it also announced it would remain a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Previously, the miner has been an outspoken advocate for the Paris Climate Agreement and was publicly considering leaving the Chamber over the Chamber’s lobbying against the Agreement. Even a brief glance at the Chamber’s shameful history on environmental issues reveals what a mistake BHP has made in staying with the Chamber.

The Chamber habitually throws around its more than $272 million in corporate-donated money and its significant lobbying weight to pursue a climate agenda beholden to the fossil fuel industry and Big Oil. It has frequently stood in opposition to environmental safeguards like the Clean Water Rule, the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, and the Stream Protection Rule. It has brought a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to block implementation of the Clean Power Plan. In fact, the Chamber sued the EPA 15 times during a recent three-year period.

Most notoriously, the Chamber has routinely attempted to block efforts to combat climate change. In 2009, the Chamber infamously called for a “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” to put climate science on trial. It has also funded a now-debunked study on the Paris Climate Agreement that dramatically overstated the potential costs of the Agreement and ignored its benefits. President Trump later cited this sham “study” as part of his rationale to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

BHP’s website has an entire section on the environment, with subsections devoted to “climate change” and “water” among other topics. Its continued support of the Chamber, however, is in effect condoning the Chamber’s constant attacks on the environment.

If BHP is truly committed to engaging on climate and green energy issues, it should take a consistent stance in which organizations it will refuse to do business with. A number of companies have already left the Chamber over its environmental policies including its anti-climate advocacy. No company that proclaims to care about the environment, sustainability, public health or the planet should remain a member.

This is why we call on the many corporations that fund it to #DropTheChamber. This Earth Day, please sign the petition to tell companies like Gap, Pepsi, and Disney to make a better decision than BHP and quit the Chamber and leave its fossilized thinking behind and put our planet on a better path to the future.